Tag Archives: Victoria Park

Hong Kong Flower Show 2011: It’s all coming up roses (and tulips… and orchids…)

Posted on March 31, 2011 | 7 comments

Forget the Botanical Gardens. Forget the overpriced, increasingly tat-filled Chinese New Year Flower Market. Forget the Chelsea Flower Show. Because for technicolour horticultural goodness, the Hong Kong Flower Show 2011 beats them all. (Well, it beats watching Chelsea on television anyhow).

The Hong Kong Flower Show is apparently an annual event held in Victoria Park that my auntie only piped up about this year, my third in HK. Thanks a lot! Oh well, at least she piped up eventually, as this was a sight I’m definitely glad I didn’t miss out on.

I love flowers – I love them even more when I don’t have to put in the hard work of maintaining them – so the Flower Show was absolutely perfect for those who want to feast on the visual delights of plants in all colours, shapes and sizes without getting your green fingers dirty! As someone who quite often misses her garden in the UK, this happily quelled any longings in some serious style!

For just $14 entry, you can wander around the countless show gardens, exhibits, displays and gardening stalls that take over the entire grounds to your heart’s content. It’s also free for the over 60s on weekdays; my auntie wasn’t sure whether she should be happy she saved money or upset that she looked old enough for no-one to check her ID!

This year’s theme was Symphony of Spring Flowers, hence all the floral pianos, harps and music notes you see scattered around – a bit cheesy in places, but generally too beautiful and immaculately-executed for you to care. There were also special displays by some of HK’s botanical societies (the orchid ones are always amazing enough to warrant a gander) whilst there were also some more modern, edgy and striking displays to cut through the cutesiness of the giant instrument-playing animals (oh who am I kidding, they were my favourite part!).

I also loved the numerous stalls selling plants and gardening supplies; if you can get past the crowds who mill around treating these as further photo opportunities, there are some really reasonable deals to be had on stuff that can be more difficult to unearth in HK. I bought a fuchsia for $30 and two violas for $10 each (and would have bought many more if I didn’t have to think about carrying it all home), whilst many orchids were only around $100. Basically, screw you CNY Flower Market, I’ll never be buying your overpriced tat again!

Anyway, enough of my rambling, I think the photos are gorgeous enough to speak for themselves. So fire up your monitor, click for enlargements so huge you can practically smell them and enjoy!

My favourite photo, taken at one of the show displays

How cute are the baby chicks?!

Ocean Park Garden

Love the creativity of these two, designed to look like music staves

Some of the more contemporary displays

Macau Garden

I think these ghostly pianos look like they were made from a skeleton’s bones!

Just can’t resist me some orchids!

Some of the more structural displays – note the number of OAPS enjoying a sit-down in the branch dome!

Mini gardens! Love the hydrangea tree and the cute little chicks and bunnies made from flowers!

After all that, I think we need a rest…

Hong Kong Flower Show 2011, Victoria Park, Causeway Bay, 11-20 March 2011. $14 entry fee, free for over-60s on weekdays ($7 on weekends). See their website for further details.

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Posted in Hong Kong, Pretty Things

Tagged Causeway Bay, exhibition, flower show, flowers, gardens, HK, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Flower Show 2011, photos, plants, sightseeing, things to do in Hong Kong, Victoria Park

Mid-Autumn Festival Hong Kong: It’s a marvellous night for a mooncake

Posted on October 4, 2010 | 3 comments

Mid-Autumn Festival may just be one of my favourite festivals in Hong Kong because just about everywhere makes the effort to look pretty. Admittedly, all it takes is a few paper lanterns scattered about, but at night time especially, it looks charming and uniquely Chinese.

Also know as Moon Festival, it’s held on the 15^th day of the 8^th month (of the lunar calendar, so roughly late September) when the moon is supposed to be at its brightest. There are many variants of the legend behind the festival, but I’ll tell you (in the best Chinese tradition!) the one that my mum told me.

A long long time ago, there used to be ten suns in the sky, which burnt away terribly at the Earth. The emperor commanded the most skilled archer in all the land, Hou Yi, to shoot down all but one of the suns – which he did, leaving us with the one sun we have today. As a reward, he was given a magic potion that would grant him eternal life and he hid it away at home. According to my mum’s version, Hou Yi became a tyrant, corrupted by power and ambition; on seeing this, his beautiful wife, Seung Orr, decided to eat the pill herself to prevent him from living forever (other versions have the wife finding and eating the pill accidentally). Upon eating the pill, she found herself becoming lighter and lighter and she began to float. Eventually, she floated out of the window, up into the sky and onto the moon where she lives today. She also has her rabbit with her, who you can sometimes see outlined on the moon.

If you’re a virgin to Moon Festival, there are only two things you need to know – lanterns and mooncake! Seung Orr adorns many a mooncake box and the traditional cakes are made with a yellow duck egg inside, representing the moon. Nowadays, there are all kinds of modern takes on the mooncake, including chocolate, mango, green tea or even ‘snowy’ ice-cream ones. We bought one that was shaped like a pig! It came in a miniature version of the traditional basket that real pigs used to be carried to market in the olden days and I love how he even has a little curly tail. Alas, he had to be decapitated and eaten – the filling was green bean paste – and my auntie said he looked a lot nicer than he tasted!

Lanterns are lit to accentuate the brightness of the moon and on the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival itself, paper ones are lit and floated off to the moon. This year, one managed to land on an MTR train, sparking a small fire, panic, evacuations, delays and talk of regulating lanterns more closely next year. As with mooncakes, lanterns have evolved with the times and you can get them in practically any shape, size or colour you desire, with inflatable musical cartoon character versions proving particularly popular with youngsters (so if it’s late September and you’re hearing a tinny tune in the dim and distant, it’s probably a toddler holding a blow-up Doaremon).

We went to the special market in Tsing Yi’s Maritime Square Mall, which is basically your one-stop Mid-Autumn shop. As you can see, the lantern stall was a riot of colour! We bought two ($35 each) – a pretty lotus flower and a gorgeous goldfish. You can see them in action in our flat below!

However, these are mere small fry compared to the lanterns that the government has built to mark the occasion. For all of Mid-Autumn weekend, Victoria Park in Causeway Bay is transformed into a luminous lantern extravaganza. It costs a small fortune but hey, who cares when it looks this spectacular?!

Check out my posts on more beautiful Mid-Autumn lanterns in Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong here and here

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Posted in Culture, Exhibitions, Hong Kong, Pretty Things

Tagged Causeway Bay, celebration, Food, HK, Hong Kong, lanterns, legend, lights, Maritime Square, market, Mid-Autumn Festival, Moon Festival, mooncake, night, photography, photos, pictures, Pretty Things, Tsing Yi, Victoria Park

Causeway Bay Flower Market: Feelin’ Floral

Posted on February 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

Another Chinese custom (yes, keep up, there are many) is to have fresh flowers in the house at CNY for good luck. Every year, there is a big Flower Market in Victoria Park in Causeway Bay for you to purchase your flowers at ridiculously over-inflated prices but it’s become almost as much of a tradition to take a spin round here for luck as it is to have fresh flowers in the first place. And it is spectacular to visit – the perfume of all those blooms is just amazing (indescribable – you have to experience it first-hand) and the flowers themselves…! Wow! Forget the Chelsea Flower Show, there’s nothing quite like seeing the most beautiful perfection of orchids, lilies and gladioli in a rainbow of colours accompanied by squawking Chinese hawkers yelling ‘Good price, lang mui, good price!’ with the smell of curry fish balls hanging acridly in the air.

Nowadays, you’ll find as much CNY tat (giant inflatables, cuddly toys and costumes of whichever animal’s year it is) and dubious street food as you will fresh flowers, yet that’s all part of the appeal. Last year, my auntie and I discovered a stall selling deep-fried ice cream on sticks. We started with one to share between us to try – and five each later, we were hooked. I barely remember if we bought any flowers that year… but alas, battered ice-cream wasn’t there to distract us this time. Novelty windmills also appear to be lucky judging by their prominence at both the fair and the stalls around Chinese temples; we bought this very pretty ribbon-y fish one (pictured installed on our balcony).

We’re savvy sorts so we didn’t actually buy any flowers from here, merely “got inspiration” before getting them cheap at our local wet market. Buying fresh flowers always seems such a silly idea as they’re dead almost before they’re alive but they really do look gorgeous and bring you some sort of unique special feeling and pleasure. These sweet peas were my choice, as they were never strong enough to survive the hardships of British weather in my garden at home. I guess a garden is one of the few things I miss about home – but I never had to look after it did I?! Perhaps the life span of fresh flowers is just about right for my current level of responsibility-taking.